The threat to companies in Honda’s supply chain could turn into opportunity

Following the announcement this week of Honda’s intention to close its Swindon operation with the announcement of 3500 job losses at the plant and potentially another 3-3500 impacted in their supply chain, Amelia Bishop who is a change consultant that specialises in Brexit change may have some good news for some of the supply chain companies.

As with most change, say Amelia, comes opportunities and in here in the UK we have had nearly two and a half years to revive our manufacturing capability, although there isn’t much evidence that we’ve exploited that huge opportunity yet.

Without visibility of Honda’s supply chain, it stands to reason that some in the supply chain will be manufacturers and having a manufacturing capability can be a huge advantage when looking to reconsider what you produce.

When we leave the EU, imports may potentially see a price increase, some sizeable due to tariffs and additional cost and the overhead burden of customs administration needed to support the import of goods.

By bringing together a manufacturing capability and the potential cost and difficulty of importing there is a real need for British manufacturing companies to review their product range and align it to similar products or diversify their product range to produce items that may be too costly to import, therefore enabling these manufactures to supply the UK market.

Therefore, if the manufacturers in Honda’s supply chain review their production capability against the imported products most at risk of high import tariffs and assess their capability in producing these items there could be a whole new future open to them.

Naturally this requires thorough research, with effort and cost of design and manufacture but for any business that wishes to explore opportunities for continued growth this could prove to be a very real option.

Amelia Bishop specialises in change and identifying opportunities and provides the research capability through to exploiting and implementing these opportunities.

Pro-Brexit campaigners have argued that leaving the EU will dramatically reduce bureaucracy and return sovereignty to the UK but, in the short to medium term at least, Brexit is likely to trigger extremely complex legal ramifications and contingent uncertainty, not least in terms of the law. The debate around sovereignty is not as simple as it first appears.